A lost paradise
by breakable bird
Summary: It's not that I forgive you. I grew up.


**disclaimer: **skip beat! © nakamura yoshiki.  
><strong>note #1: <strong>it means one day she will look at him and not feel anything. that's revenge.

— **a lost paradise**  
>by breakable bird<p>

* * *

><p>She realizes one rainy afternoon, while brushing her hair. (One... thousand... hundred... times? She couldn't remember anymore. So she brushed and brushed and brushed and it wasn't black and silky but now—now this loud, smirking, confident girl she sees in the mirror—she could do what Kyoko couldn't, what a bit of her heart still couldn't comprehend.)<p>

Kyoko had read about those cults, about brainwashing and conditioning. She breathes in and out and the window turns blurry. With a pale finger, she writes _kyoko!_ and thinks about the love that eats her since childhood. If she hadn't loved Sho, she would've hated him, because for her—he was one of the few people that it was impossible to ignore, it couldn't be a soft feeling of acquaintance, it couldn't be the lightest touch of dislike. She had wanted him so much, had been ready to do so much...

(She remembers princesses and princes and towers and then she laughs and, subtly, oh-so-carefully, palms d the bright rock. It was nothing especial, it was everything she appreciated, and her memory delights itself with fairies and golden-colored hair and a lovely smile only, only for him.)

Kyoko is a girl. Girls, they like fairy tales, like the promise of a love that will never be broken. But Sho is a boy, young and reckless, and he doesn't know a thing about taking care of Kyoko's heart. He taught her how to built a tower (she knelt and she sweat and she was lonely and when it was finished, after years of loneliness at school and smiling at guests when she wanted to scream in pain _I HATE BEING A WOMAN_ she always was that kind, really—she climbed and entered through the window) and he told her to wait, he told her thanks, he talked, and she listened, and she loved him. (This. Learn to fix yourself, darling.)

She doesn't believe the first love is the real one. Kyoko had fallen in love before knowing she was unfortunate enough to be sick, ill—love wouldn't destroy her, but it would make her, soften her, and she would care about nothing but her beloved's fate. So she closed her heart with seven locks and then seven more and forgot about the keys, hid them in the veins of the earth, and as to not break, she kept Corn and fantasies close (it was warm, she reasoned. It was a love that couldn't—wouldn't hurt her.)

Mogami Kyoko-chan is not broken.

(Sho left her in a tower that he had no intention of climbing, he would not rescue her, he would forget her—there were prettier girls, free and with empty hearts he wanted to touch but could never catch, because only Kyoko would be foolish enough to let him poke something so precious.)

She slept under three blankets and nursed her pain. Licked her wounds (so many, so many years of doing so), promised revenge and drew lines on the floor, but didn't cry—not for him, not again. She doesn't need a prince, because there's a fairy sticking out his tongue in the window and she rolls up her sleeves and straightens her back and just who does he thinks he is, anyway? Fuwa Shotaro, she decides, perfect posture and short hair, would make a terrible, sad knight.

— what but fake sweet nothings, she wondered, could a boy so selfish offer? and why would a princess accept such a pitiful display?

She doesn't want to know. She doesn't want to think about good points. Memory is what makes you as a person, what paints the canvas. Kyoko doesn't want to think about the awkward silence while she cried and tried to pretend she didn't and he stared and she knew knew knew because Kyoko-chan was in sync with him. Now, that feels like petting a monster. Like she's a traitor, because she's been betrayed, and her first love doesn't even have the decency to care. It _was_ too strong, what she felt... no sane girl would run away for Sho. Not if they knew him. Not if he hadn't even said «I love you». She wasn't his girlfriend—she dreamed so, yeah... but it wouldn't happen.

Because he was so perfect. (Used to be, love paints the world in kinder shades of red.)

He was so, so perfect. Too good. With his childish fancy for uncool food and brash, careless personality. She had wanted him with a love that—it reached madness, it bordered on hate. Kyoko understood, then, what so many people meant when saying clichés like _take a step from love and you'll land on hate_. If Kyoko was a tree, Sho was her first root. And her gardener. Except he forgot to water her. So Kyoko did it herself, because—because this she learnt young:

Nobody will come, Kyoko. There's only you.

(She had been a fool, too—she could say so, she could admit it to herself, maybe to Moko-san. But she didn't feel like talking about dirty bits of herself to beautiful, determined Moko-san, who would bite anyone who dared to interfere with her dream. Moko-san doesn't care about boys and when her eyes follow Tsuruga-san it's only because he's a chameleon—an evil one alright—and he can shift and change and Moko-san _wants _that, just like Kyoko wants to kick her past in the face, wants to stand with her back loose and wants to smile at Sho without it meaning anything, she wants to see her mother one day and tell her _hello. i don't care at all_. Kyoko looks at Kanae _click_ sad _click_ happy _click _angry and knows Kaede is a tree in the same forest.)

She doesn't want to hate him, really. It's just—Kyoko has to, _has _to because nobody hates Sho. Maybe Tsuruga-san feels a mild dislike tampered for twisting Kyoko like that, until someone so weird and creepy like the dog wants her, wants to fill in the empty spots in her bones. Kyoko doesn't mind loving, but she does mind falling in love. (So she takes care of not disliking Tsuruga-san _for real_—it's not going to happen again, it's not going to happen again, it's not it's not it's not—how many times must a heart break before the scars start to weight, to hurt like dull knives? She's a bit confused nowadays, Kyoko-chan, because if she can hate Sho so easily... it doesn't feel that different from the iwillforever-kind of love.)

Kyoko looks at the mirror and see her own savior. I'm not a princess, she thinks. Dares herself to touch the edge of Sho's poster (she knows about hate waning like the moon, fluctuating, and will not allow it. _Think about towers_, she tells herself). Breathes in, breathes out.

The trick is not forgiving, she believes. To hurt him, she only has to push him out of her system, open her head, her heart—Kyoko is cleaning her bones, sun-bleaching them until they're warm and she welcomes them again. Her body is young and her soul bruised, but Mogami Kyoko doesn't need anyone to save her. She is going forward (the trick is not forgiving), and she is not forgetting. One day, she promises—her breath catches, it's the edge of sleep and it cuts her, sharp like broken glass, piercing like needles—one day, she hopes—

—in the end she can only hope—

—I loved you so much and you did this to me, you changed me, I knew you were selfish but—do you think I didn't—Kyoko is not a fool, only foolish—I had hoped—I knew you would leave, I had hoped—maybe, if he left, then her love would wane, would pale and time would erase everything but memories—she could live with memories, she could learn from the past—_keep looking forward_—but he had asked her to come and nothing in her could resist—this was her reason for living: a thick-headed boy who didn't even know what to do with his hands when she cried.

(I'm a hoper, she mocks the image. His hair doesn't even look so bad, she thinks distantly, and knows triumph). One day, maybe—if there is luck, if she can look away, if she can break the tower instead of just leaving it—she will be able to look at him, and not feel the other face of a love intense as only the first ardour of adolescence can give you. He had been like poison, to her—sickly sweet and bubbling in places he had no business. Winning is important—Kyoko is only mortal, allow her a satisfaction, alright?

She doesn't know, but maybe in the aftermath she'll leave. She'll travel, and go to college. And hopefully—hopefully this lovehate will fade, pale like she had planned before Sho, like always, fucked up everything. And hopefully she will not love a broken man with a perfect mask, because healing goes both ways. _It could have been beautiful_, she supposed. If Sho hadn't been—but no, he was what he was, and she was what she was, and in the end, she wouldn't care, but she could think about looking at him and not feeling the fury and the love and all twisting together, curling itself in her blood, she could think about it _now_.

This is what time does, she muses. Breaks us all, changes us all. The sun is still in the sky, and the trees bathe in sunshine. Life moves on. (The trick is not forgetting.) Nobody asks for it. They grow up.


End file.
